Abstract

Stress is a state of an individual that results from the interaction of the individual with the environment that is perceived as threatening to the well-being. It is an external constraint which upsets an individual both mentally and physically. Individual in a stressful situation is influenced by his or her mental ability to carry out ongoing tasks. Medical education is highly challenging and often places heavy demands on the mental health of the students. Compared to other fields of education; medical education is evidenced by high prevalence of stress. Educational process exerts an inadvertent negative effect on student’s mental health with a high frequency of depression, anxiety and stress among medical students. Students exposed to work overload and examinations in a competitive environment with constant pressure of assessment brings various changes in their daily habits such as lack of sleep and irregular diet. Mental morbidity is least accounted form of all population health studies and with the threatening rates of mental ill-health and rising rates of deaths due to the lack of early recognition of these morbidities, with not many Indian studies to document this burden. Therefore, the presence of depression, anxiety and stress among medical undergraduate students was assessed using a previously validated and standardized instrument, Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS 42) and the associations with their socio-demographic characteristics were identified. The objectives of the study were to assess the prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress among medical undergraduate students and to study the association of stress, anxiety and depression with the socio-demographic characteristics of medical under- graduate students.